NAME Video::DVDRip - GUI for copying DVDs, based on an open Low Level API DESCRIPTION This Perl module consists currently of two major components: 1. A low level OO style API for ripping and transcoding DVD video, which is based on Thomas Oestreichs program transcode, a Linux Video Stream Processing Tool. This API is currently well undocumented. 2. A Gtk+ based Perl program called 'dvd::rip' which provides a nice GUI to control all necessary steps from ripping, adjusting all parameters and transcoding the video to the format you desire. The distribution name is derived from the Perl namespace it occupies: Video::DVDRip. Although the DVD Ripper GUI is called dvd::rip, because it's shorter and easier to pronounce (if you omit the colons... ;) PREREQUISITES transcode dvd::rip delegates all the low level DVD handling to transcode, which can be obtained here: http://www.theorie.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~ostreich/transcode/ dvd::rip expects all transcode binaries to be found in the standard search PATH. Image Magick For image processing dvd::rip uses the widely distributed software package Image Magick, at least the programs identify and convert should be installed on your system. All versions above version 4 should work (actually tested with 5.3.1). dvd::rip does not use Perl Magick. Perl Modules For its GUI component dvd::rip needs the Perl Gtk module, which presumes Gtk+ version 1.2 or higher. I tested dvd::rip with Version Perl Gtk 0.7008. You can find the Gtk module on CPAN, e.g.: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Gtk/ xine If you have the movie player xine installed, you can preview selected DVD titles with the appropriate audio channels. Maybe I'll support mplayer, too, in upcoming versions. DOWNLOADING You can download dvd::rip from any CPAN mirror. You will find it in the following directory: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-authors/id/J/JR/JRED/ I recommend downloading from a mirror, which are listed here http://www.perl.com/CPAN/SITES.html You'll also find recent information, some screenshots and documentation on my homepage: http://www.netcologne.de/~nc-joernre/ INSTALLATION First install all packages listed in the PREREQUISITES section. Then extract the .tar.gz file, change into the created directory and generate the Makefile and execute make: perl Makefile.PL make Among other things this builds the binary program 'splitpipe', which uses dvd::rip for ripping and scanning the DVD in the same run. Now it's up to you to type make install which installs all the Perl modules in your Perl library path, and the two executables dvdrip splitpipe in your Perl bin directory. Otherwise you can use dvd::rip right here and now by executing the 'dvdrip' program from the build directory. BASE CONFIGURATION / PREFERENCES On first startup of dvd::rip you should check the global preferences in the Edit menu. Enter your DVD configuration and data directory here. The defaults will most likely not work on your system. These settings are stored in your home directory: ~/.dvdriprc Remove this file for falling back to the defaults. NOW HAVE FUN Create a new project by choosing the appropriate entry of the main menu. The GUI should be more or less self-explanatory. Please check my homepage for more details on using dvd::rip. BUG REPORTS / CONTRIBUTING If you find bugs or have suggestions which make dvd::rip a better tool: don't hesitate to send me emails (see AUTHOR section below). If you find a bug which crashes dvd::rip, please add the following information to your report: 1. information about your Linux installation, which may be interesting (Kernel version, Distro version, X11 Version) 2. information about your Perl installation. Simply send me the output of the "perl -V" command. 3. if possible a description how the bug can be reproduced. Patches are welcome. I prefer unified context diffs created this way: diff -urN Video-DVDRip-0.21 Video-DVDRip-0.21.patched where Video-DVDRip-0.21 is the root directory of the original distribution and Video-DVDRip-0.21.patched your modified version. If you encounter problems ripping specific DVDs, this is probably a transcode problem. Maybe you want to report this directly to Thomas Östreich. If you're not sure about this, report the problem to me and I'll see what I can do for you. AUTHOR Joern Reder You can contact me by email. Please place the word "dvd::rip" everywhere in the subject, in addition to your real topic, because this helps me classifying your email correctly. Thanks. COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2001 by Joern Reder, All Rights Reserved. This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. SEE ALSO perl(1). CHANGES $Id: Changes,v 1.8 2001/12/09 12:50:21 joern Exp $ Revision history for Perl extension Video::DVDRip 0.23 Sun Dec 09 2001, joern Bugfixes: - fast resizing: 32 pixel boundary check ommited checking the clip1 size - transcode progress label did always show the "split afterwards" message, even if started without splitting. 0.22 Sun Dec 09 2001, joern Bugfixes: - applied Perl 5.005 patch supplied by Norbert Preining . Thanks. - DVD read-toc code always tried a mount, even if the DVD was already mounted. This could confuse systems using automounter. New Features: - Support of the fast resizing algorithm of transcode (transcode-0.5.2-20011206 is recommended because of a bug in the horizontal fast resize code in earlier versions). Fast resizing presumes 32 pixel boundaries. If you break with this rule, you'll get an error window on transcoding. I'm planning a wizard which helps calculating the correct values, because this can be a brain squeezing task ;) - Added two new Presets for anamorph transcoding using the fast resizing algorithm. They should bypass the time, until the fast resizing wizard is finished. - Support of multipass DivX encoding. - Added a button to the Transcode tab for viewing the transcoded non-splitted AVI file. - transcode progress label shows, whether started with or without splitting 0.21 Sat Dec 01 2001, joern Bugfixes: - fixed color problem with snapshot images New Features: - transcode 0.5.1 supports 4GB AVI files, so max. filesize for the bitrate suggestion is now 4000 MB (was 2000 MB with transcode 0.5.0) 0.20 Tue Nov 27 2001, joern - First public release. Should be usable but is not tested with thousands of DVDs.